mexican gothic. biggest waste of my time.

Anonymous wrote:Crawdads, Nightingale, Seven Husbands all so underwhelming.

Super pretentious - The Fates and the Furies.

Oh yes, glad someone mentioned this one. And I think I have a pretty darn high tolerance for pretentious navel gazing (didn't mind some of the other books dinged by the others here). But I have yet to come across more annoying characters. Ugh.

Anonymous wrote:Kite Runner

Yep, total crap.

Anonymous wrote:The Alchemist

+1

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Anonymous wrote:Da Vinci Code


I will judge if you like it.

Terrible book, certainly one of the worst that I've read that I actually made it through.

Probably not controversial at all, but I tried reading 50 Shades of Gray and just couldn't do it. I'm curious if the dialog from the book is what's used in the movie, but I'm not interested enough in seeing the movie to find out.

I feel the same way. In fact, he is one of those authors whose popularity I just do not understand. Dan Brown writes TERRIBLY. Another is Anne Rice. Even her erotica was so, SO bad; how do you make sex seem so incredibly boring?

I honestly do not understand how anyone can like this guy's books. Utter garbage.
I never throw books in the trash, but I make an exception for Dan Brown's.

"Love in the Time of Cholera"
Took me forever to slog through it. Made me realize life is too short to keep reading a book you don't like.

Anonymous wrote:Recently, “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah. Oof. Her writing is painful.

I hated this book so much that I find myself annoyed when I see it or her other books recommended. Totally incoherent plot - shifts in the relationships between characters come out of the blue with no character development or plots elements to explain them. We are supposed to care about her boyfriend when he only appears on like 12 pages of a 600 page book? I cannot understand why this book is so damned popular.

Big Little Lies

It was a Did Not Finish (DNF) for me.

Anonymous wrote:I have had four people gift or try to loan me Educated, saying that I'll love it but I HATED it.
I found it tedious and unrelatable, and maybe not entirely honest.

+1. Usually love books like this (memoirs about overcoming hard times etc.) but absolutely hated this one. Couldn't get through it.

Also didn't like "Such a Fun Age."

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Anonymous wrote:Atonement. I couldn't even get through a quarter of it. My MIL, who is British and an avid reader, couldn't either.

OMG, me too. I liked other books he wrote but HATED this. Just disliked all the characters I think. Never found anyone else who didn't like it.

I liked it, but I would also describe it as interminable. The descriptions just go on and on and then it sort of...all wraps up. But I still remember to this day that the mother developed a migraine and went to lay down and used the sounds happening in the house to keep tabs on what was going on.

Anonymous wrote:The Testaments was a snooze fest.

It was not great. I listened to it on Audible.

I feel like it was a real misstep for Atwood, who got her head a little turned with fame.

Anonymous wrote:Eat, Pray, Love. I read a couple of chapters and could not get past her selfishness.

And I didn’t love Nickel and Dimed. It just seemed to be missing the next step. There was no analysis to it. Being poor is hard and it sucks. I feel like I already knew that. I still don’t understand why it was such a big book. I don’t want to denigrate the author, as it’s not her fault it caught traction. But something was definitely missing and I don’t think it deserved the attention it got.

I found Eat, Pray, Love a great read in spite of her selfishness. I almost found it funny how un-self aware she was when writing this book ostensibly about self-awareness.

Nickel and Dimed was the first time I was really introduced to the concept of people that worked hard but couldn't get ahead. I'm not sure what you mean about it missing the next step. I felt like the next step was the realization that things were set up in such a way that there were insurmountable hurdles built in to overcoming poverty or near poverty.

I also kind of disliked The Dutch House. The only party I actually enjoyed was the descriptions of the house. Most of the plot either didn't make sense or was boring or plain maddening.

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how book recommendations / similarities work. I liked Hunger Games. How did people think I would like Maze Runner or Divergent? How are those books popular? Why are the considered similar? Why is The Giver good? I think I named 3 bad books here, but I don't know if they count because they shouldn't be popular.

Because they're all dystopian YA books that came out in a similar-ish time frame? The Giver was okay. Kids that age aren't used to ambiguous endings, so I think it was important to introduce that concept there (DD read it, thought it was 'Meh', and we did discuss the ending especially).

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Anonymous wrote:My Brilliant Friend. This book seemed like it was made up as she went along. They didn't even seem like friends, and their life trajectories didn't even make sense. Totally random nonsense in a Neapolitan setting.

HBO series is great though...acting and visually. Some of the story is soap opera like, but I still loved it.

I loved those books!